An Anne Maria Christmas Carol
by DaleJr.88
Summary: All of Anne Maria's life, she had surrounded herself with money and loneliness. Yet, when her deceased cousin of seven years visits her at the strike of midnight and three spirits visit her, will it thaw her frozen heart or will she be cursed to be greedy forever?


**Disclaimer: I do not own the Total Drama Series nor a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. They are the works of their respected owners. Also, Anne Marie will have a cousin named Jessica in this story.**

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><p><strong>Chapter 1: Christmas Eve<strong>

Jessica was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of her burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Anne Maria signed it. And Anne's name was good upon 'Change, for anything she chose to put her hand to. Old Jessica was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Jessica was as dead as a door-nail.

Anne Maria knew she was dead? Of course she did. How could it be otherwise? Anne and her were partners for I don't know how many years. Anne was her sole executor, her sole administrator, her sole assign, her sole residuary legatee, her sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Anne was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that she was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Jessica's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Jessica was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot - say Saint Peter's for instance - literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Anne never painted out Old Jessica's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the door: Anne and Jessica. The firm was known as Anne and Jessica. Sometimes people new to the business called Anne Anne and sometimes Jessica, but she answered to both names. It was all the same to her.

Oh! But she was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Anne! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within her froze her young features, nipped her small nose, shrivelled her cheek, stiffened her gait; made her eyes red, her thick lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in her grating voice. A frosty rime was on her head, and on her eyebrows, and her wiry chin. She carried her own low temperature always about with her; she iced her office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

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><p>It was a chilly evening in Rome, Italy. Christmas Eve to be exact and Rome was a busy child for tomorrow was the big day... Christmas Day! The people were busy gathering together important Italian items for Christmas, for the Italians considered Christmas to be a sacred holiday, for it was birth of their King of Heaven, Jesus Christ. An odd group of people in Rome was the...<p>

**Total Drama Teens.**

They ended up in Rome by the trickery of Chris and now they was stuck there for the holiday. They all were happy to not only be away from Chris but to be in Rome, city of the Caesars for the holidays and the city that was home to St. Peter's Basilica. All of the teens were happy to be there, expect for...

**Anne Maria.**

Anne Maria hated Christmas and her heart turned to ice when she found out that she would be in Rome for Christmas. Anne Maria said that Christmas was awful and she wanted to go back to Canada but the rest of the teens yelled,"No!" at her for they wanted to get away from Chris. She was so cold that external heat and cold had little influence on her. No warmth could warm her, no wintry weather could change her mind. No wind blew more bitter in Rome than she, no snow was more intent on its purpose. Foul Winter weather didn't know how to change her attitude toward her hatred toward Christmas. The heaviest rain, snow, hail, sleet and snow only had an advantage over Anne Maria. They often came down handsomely and Anne Maria never did.

No one stopped her in the street to say,

"My dearest Anne, how are you? When will you come to see me?"

No peasant implored her for a coin, no children dared asked her what o'clock it was for Rome knew that she hated Christmas and they knew to avoid her in the streets but Anne Maria didn't care! It was the very nature that she liked, to edge her way along the paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what she wanted overall.

But enough about Anne...

It was Christmas Eve and Anne sat in her room in a hotel that was in the heart of Rome and had good views from all points. It was cold, butting weather: foggy and cold. When she looked down onto the streets below, the people along the courts were wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts and stamping their feet on the pavement stones, just to stay warm. It was the coldest winter in Rome's history and the city clocks had only just gone three, but the weather had made it quite dark already for it had been a day when no light shined in the skies. The fog came in from the Tiber River and settled over the city while the snow kept falling. The fog was so so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large-scale.

The door of Anne's room was open so that she would keep an eye out on upon Cody, who was her assistant. He was forced into the job by Anne for she needed a person to help her with everything for she was the laziest of all girls...

Anyways, Anne Maria had a very small fire but it only was enough to heat her. Cody barley had any heat and it came from a piece of wood that was more like one tiny piece of coal. Yet, Cody couldn't ask for more for Anne would always yell in Italian at him if he did and so he preferred to suffer than to ask. Despite him wearing a white comforter and sweater to keep warm, Cody was always still shivering and cold.

"Merry Christmas, Anne! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Ella, who entered the room so quickly that this was the first intimation she had of her approach.

"What da ya want?" replied Anne Maria within a cold and chilly voice.

"To wish you a Merry Christmas Anne!" said Ella. "You don't really mean that, I know you better than that."

"I do," said Anne Maria. "Merry Christmas eh!? What right do you have to be so happy? What are the reasons you have to be merry on this day? You are poor enough. Poor as much as that Cody kid in the next room."

"Come on then," replied Ella cheerfully. "What gives you the right to be such in a bad mood? What is the reason that you are so foul? You are just the same as much as I am."

All Anne Maria said, at the spur of the moment, was,

"Folly!"

"Don't be cross Anne," Ella replied.

"What else can I be when I live in a world full of fools that believe in Christmas! Out with Christmas! What is Christmas time when you find yourself with bills to pay, when you become a year older yet not an hour richer than what you was last year, a time for you to organize your finances for the new year. If I can work by my will than everyone can, everyone who believes in Christmas should be boiled with eel and be buried with holly in his heart. They should!"

"Anne!" pleaded Ella.

"Ella!" returned Anne. "Keep Christmas in your own way and I'll do it in my fashion."

"Keep it? You don't ever keep it!"

"Leave me alone than! Much good may it to do to you! Much good has it ever done for you."

"There are many things from which I have derived good and Christmas is one of them. You can't forget, Anne, that Christmas is not only the birthday of the Catholic religion but it is also a time, apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Anne, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!''

Cody gave Ella a round of applause, becoming immediately sensible of the atmosphere, he poked the fire and extinguished the last spark.

"If I hear another sound from you and you'll have a early Christmas gift by working for me forever." Anne Maria said before turning back to Ella. "You are a good speaker, enter the Miss Universe Contest."

"Don't be that way Anne! Would you like to dine with us tomorrow?"

"Why?" Anne replied.

"Just give it a chance and please join us. Please. "

"Good Afternoon."

"I want nothing from you; why can't we be friends? "

"Good afternoon."

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So A Merry Christmas, Anne!"

"Good Afternoon!"

"And a-"

"I said **GOOD AFTERNOON**!" Anne Maria said as Ella left the room, without an angry word. As Ella was leaving, she stopped and allowed Cody to give the greeting of the season to her. Despite him being colder, in terms of temperature, than Ella, he was actually warmer for he returned the greetings kindly.

"Cody," the both heard Anne Maria say to herself, "I pay him 15 euros a week and he is always talking about Christmas and-"

Ella didn't hear the rest as she saw DJ and Bridgette come in. She gave them a nod as she walked out and the two of them came in. They was dressed in decent clothes for the Roman winter, trench coats and scarfs. The two looked at Anne Maria before DJ said,

"Evening Anne Maria and Cody! We was wondering what you all are going to do for tomorrow."

"Well... I have nothing planned." Cody replied.

"Why do you ask?" Anne Maria asked both of them.

"Well, we are going to throw a huge party for Christmas tomorrow night and you two are invited!"

"Sweet!" Cody replied to Bridgette.

"No thanks!" Anne Maria replied.

"WHAT!" DJ yelled. "Come on Anne, why would you not go! This will be one of a few times that we will bond together and celebrate the holidays in a foreign city. The opportunity may never come again."

"So what! I hate the season and everything related with Christmas and it's just a pointless holiday."

"This holiday is not just a holiday." Bridgette said as she put her opinion on the table. "It's a special holiday about giving back to others and to show a holiday filled with peace and goodwill. Not only that, but it is the day that we celebrate the birth of Christ who is our Lord and Savior. So with that in mind, will you come to the party Anne?"

"I just wished to be left alone. Since you ask me why I won't go, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I focus on myself and never take a minute off from it. Now, if you all excuse me, I need to go back to myself."

DJ and Bridgette sighed as they looked at Cody and winked at him before they left. Both of them knew that he would come to the party, no matter what Anne Maria told him to do.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go on foot while snow fell on the Ancient and Eternal City, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping silly down at Anne Maria out of a Renaissance window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some laborers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Mayor of Rome, in the stronghold of the might at Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five euros on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up tomorrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the eel.

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Anne's window to regale her with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay! Anne Maria seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, fleeing into the fog and even more congenial frost.

Anne Maria turned around and saw Cody looking at her.

"I suppose you want to be away from me tomorrow."

"I like you Anne but a day off would be nice."

Anne Maria looked at Cody with a struggle of anger. Cody was afraid that she would say no but to his surprize, she said,

"I normally don't like the holiday but I guess I can be kind enough and let you take the day off. Be here early the morning afterwards."

Cody promised that he would; and Anne Maria walked out with a growl as he left to join his friends for Christmas Eve.

As usual, Anne took her regular dinner in her bed; and having read all the Italian magazines and beguiled the rest of the evening with her fashion and makeup, went on to bed. She lived in chambers which had once belonged to her a member of her family. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Anne and the Total Drama teens, the other rooms being all let out as offices or storage rooms. The courtyard was so dark that even Anne Maria, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with her hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Anne Maria had seen it, night and morning, during her whole residence in the place; also Anne Maria had as little of what is called fancy about him as any Italian in the City of Rome, even including - which is a bold word - the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Anne Maria had not bestowed one thought on Jessica, her deceased cousin of seven years. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Anne Maria, having her key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change: not a knocker, but Jessica's face.

Jessica's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the house were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Anne Maria as Jessica used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot-air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid color, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

As Anne Maria looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that she was not startled, or that her blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But she put her hand upon the key she had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted her candle.

She did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before she slammed the door; and she did look cautiously behind it first, as if she half expected to be terrified with the sight of Jessica's hairstyle sticking out within the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so she said,

"Folly, Folly!''

**And closed it with a bang.**

The sound resounded through the wing like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Anne Maria was not a woman to be frightened by echoes. She fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs, slowly too: trimming her candle as she went.

It so happened that Anne Maria had a whole wing of the hotel to herself for the teens lived in the other wing. Her wing was so massive that it held a sitting room, library, and several bedrooms, which were always empty. None thing was more glorifying than her staircase within the wing.

If you could get a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadside, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason Anne Maria thought she saw a locomotive hearse going on before her in the gloom, dark stair way. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Anne Maria's dip.

Up Anne Maria went, not caring a button for that: darkness is cheap, and Anne Maria liked it. But before she shut her heavy door, to her bedroom, she walked through her rooms to see that all was right. She had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.

Sitting-room, bed-room, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Anne Maria has a cold in her head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in her dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, she closed her door, and locked herself in; double-locked her self in, which was not her custom. Thus secured against surprise, she took off his cravat; put on her dressing-gown and slippers and sat down before the fire to take her dinner.

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. She was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before she could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Italian merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Roman tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Jessica, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole room. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Jessica's head on every one.

"Folly!'' said Anne Maria and walked across the room.

After several turns, she sat down again. As she threw her head back in the chair, her glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as she looked, she saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar. Anne Maria then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then she heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards her door.

"I won't believe it... I refuse to believe this!" Anne Maria said.

Her color changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before her eyes. Upon it's coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know her! Jessica's Ghost!'' and fell again.

The same face: the very same. Jessica is an Italian village dress. White, went down to the shoulders and had traces of black. She was wearing her paisley headscarf, one that Anne Maria always knew form when she was a little girl. The chain she drew was clasped about her middle. It was long, and wound about her like a tail; and it was made (for Anne Maria observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. Her body was transparent; so that Anne Maria, observing her, and looking through her, could see the buttons on the back of her dress.

Anne Maria had often heard it said that Jessica had no bowels, but she had never believed it until now.

No, nor did she believe it even now. Though she looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before her; though she felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded scarf bound about its head and chin, which wrapper she had not observed before; she was still incredulous, and fought against her senses.

"How? How?" said Anne Maria, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?''

"Much!'' replied Jessica's voice, no doubt about it.

"Who are you?''

"Ask me who I was.''

"Who were you then.'' said Anne Maria, raising her voice. "You're particular, for a shade.'' She was going to say "to a shade,'' but substituted this, as more right.

"In life I was your cousin, Jessica Maria."

"Can you - can you sit down?'' asked Ann Maria, looking doubtfully at her.

"I can.''

"Do it, then.''

Anne Maria asked the question, because she didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find herself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if she were quite used to it.

"You don't believe in me,'' observed the Ghost.

"I don't," replied Anne Maria.

"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?''

"I don't know,'' said Anne Maria.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because,'' said Anne Maria, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of apple pie, a blot of hot sauce, or a cheeseburger, or maybe even an undone baked potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!''

Anne Maria was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did she feel, in her heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that she tried to be smart, as a means of distracting her own attention, and keeping down her terror; for the specter's voice disturbed the very marrow within her bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Anne Maria felt, the very deuce with her. There was something very awful, too, in the specter's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Anne Maria could not feel it herself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, her hair, and skirts were still agitated as by the hot vapor from an overheated oven.

"You see this toothpick?'' asked Anne Maria, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from herself.

"I do,'' replied Jessica.

"You are not looking at it,''

"But I see it,' not with it standing.''

"Well!'' returned Anne Maria, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my creation. I-"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook her chain's with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Anne Maria held on tight to her chair, to save herself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was her horror, when the phantom taking off the scarf round her head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, her lower jaw dropped down upon her breast!

Anne Maria fell upon her knees, and clasped her hands before her face.

"Mercy!'' she cried out. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?''

"Lady of the worldly mind!'' replied Jessica, "do you believe in me or not?''

"I do,'' said Anne Maria. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?''

Again the specter raised a cry, and shook its chain, and wrung its shadowy hands.

"You are fettered,'' said Anne Maria, trembling. "Tell me why?''

"I wear the chain I forged in life,'' replied Jessica. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wear it. Is its pattern strange to you?''

Anne Maria trembled more and more.

"Or would you know,'' pursued Jessica, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!''

Anne Maria glanced about her on the floor, in the expectation of finding herself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but she could see nothing.

"Jessica," she said, imploringly. "Sweet Jessica Maria, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jessica."

"I have none to give,'' Jessica replied. "It comes from other regions, Anne Maria, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of people. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond business - mark me! - in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!''

It was a habit with Anne Maria, when she became thoughtful, to put her hands in her nightgown, Pondering on what Jessica had said, she did so now, but without lifting up her eyes, or getting off her knees.

"You must have been very slow about it, Jessica,'' Anne observed, in a business-like way, though with humility and deference.

"Slow!'' Jessica repeated.

"Seven years dead,'' mused Anne Maria. "And travelling all the time?''

"The whole time, No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.''

"You travel fast?''

"On the wings of the wind."

"You might have obtained a great measure of ground in seven years,''

Jessica, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the court would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,'' cried Jessica, "not to know, that ages of incessant labor by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!''

"But you were always a good cousin of economics, Jessica!" faltered Anne Maria, who now began to apply this to herself.

"Economics! Family was my business. The common welfare was my family; you, your parents, grandpartents, and you cousins, were, all, my family. The dealings of my life were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my family!''

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

At this time of the rolling year,'' the spectrum said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!''

Anne was very much dismayed to hear the spectrum going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.

"Hear me!'' cried Jessica. "My time is nearly gone.''

"I will,'' replied Anne. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jessica! Pray!''

"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.''

It was not an agreeable idea. Anne Maria shivered, and wiped the perspiration from her brow.

"That is no light part of my penance. I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Anne."

"You were always a good friend to me,'' said Anne Maria.

"You will be haunted,'' resumed Jessica, "by Three Spirits.''

Anne's countenance fell almost as low as Jessica's had done.

"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jessica?'' she demanded, in a faltering voice.

"It is.''

"I - I think I'd rather not,'' said Anne Maria

"Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One.''

"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jessica?"

"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us.''

When it had said these words, the spectrum took its scarf from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Anne Maria knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the scarf. She ventured to raise her eyes again, and found her supernatural visitor confronting her in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

The apparition walked backward from her; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectrum reached it, it was wide open.

It beckoned Anne Maria to approach, which she did. When they were within two paces of each other, Jessica's Ghost held up its hand, warning her to come no nearer. Anne Maria stopped.

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, she became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailing's inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectrum, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Anne Maria followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Jessica's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Anne Maria in their lives. She had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white suit, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, she could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when she had retired.

Anne Maria closed the window, and examined the door by which Jessica had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with her own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. She tried to say "Folly!'' but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion she had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or her glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

* * *

><p><strong>Well, that concludes chapter one of an Anne Maria Christmas Carol. Now you all may be wondering where I have been these last few months. My answer is that I have been like a lazy sloth. Now this is an early Christmas story for I have a goal of having this story finished before Christmas Eve. Also, chapter updates may vary on the fact of how much free time I have. Until the next chapter comes out, remember to read, review, favor, and spread the word.<strong>


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